This invention pertains generally to devices for improving hockey skills and particularly shooting skills. It may be used advantageously by players of all skill levels, requires no set-up or assembly, is equally suited for use both indoors and outdoors and has physiological memory training attributes which increase on-ice performance.
With the great increase in popularity of youth hockey in recent years has come an attendant desire to improve necessary hockey skills. Because of hockey""s popularity there is a concomitant increasing pressure for ice time for league play, and an accompanying decrease in ice time available for individual practice. Further, the requirement that daylight and evening hours accommodate both hockey and non-hockey ice activities, has generated a need for hockey players to increase their skills off the ice. Several devices have been proposed or reached the market directed to the objective of improving hockey skills by off ice practice, but none truly accomplishes the most important individual skillxe2x80x94shootingxe2x80x94in a simple, compact unit that can be easily used either indoors or outdoors in a minimum space. For example, one device which has reached the market requires over 15 feet of lineal space since the unit itself is 15 feet long and there must of course be additional space available at each end to give the participant standing and swinging room. As a consequence the device is impractical, indeed unusable, in the vast majority of indoor locations, such as an activity room in a home or a garage, and thus the device is only usable in an outdoor location such as a driveway or a tennis court. And since many outdoor locations are not lighted, the hours of use are usually limited to daylight hours which can of course be quite 5 brief, particularly in the winter in Northern states when the sun sets well before 5:00 p.m. during many weeks of the year. The device requires substantial assembly skills and time and is not adjustable to match the skill level of the user which may vary from a mite to a college level performer, or even a professional. And further the device, as a practical matter, is not portable, at least in the sense that it may conveniently be used at the home of participant A to on one day, at B""s home the next day, and at C""s home the third day with transfers made by the youngsters (who are most in need of skill development) without the assistance of adults.
A further deficiency in existing and proposed devices is that they do not have a positive carryover effect from the practice area; i.e.: a bedroom or a garage, to the ice. In other words, such known devices have no physiological memory training attribute in the sense that, in the mind of the user, none of the conditioning of the mind and body of the user resulting from use off ice carries over to on-ice time. Thus, on-ice and off-ice time do not merge in a physiological sense in the mind and body of a user.
For these and other reasons which will appear hereinafter there is an unmet need for a hockey skill development device which is adaptable to all skill levels from mites to professional, requires no assembly skill or time, is usable both indoors and outdoors at all hours of the day, is sufficiently light and rugged that it can be transferred from location to location by young hockey players with ease and provides physiological memory training to the user.